John Waterlow |
A leader of us all
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The photograph part of which is
shown here, was taken in July 1996
outside the London School of Hygiene
and Tropical Medicine, as part of
the 80th birthday tribute to John
Waterlow. He is seated fourth from
the left, in the front row in which
Joan Stephen is seated at the left.
By his side on the right are his
close colleagues Sir George Alleyne,
now former director of the Pan
American Health Organization, and
John Garrow, a successor of John as
director of the Tropical Medicine
Research Unit in Jamaica.
Other students and colleagues of
John in the picture include, in the
top row, Jo Hautvast, former
secretary-general of the
International Union of Nutritional
Sciences (second from the left); and
former UNICEF chiefs of nutrition
Rainer Gross and
Roger Shrimpton (fourth and
sixth from the left). In the second
row, above those seated, they
include Prakash Shetty, a successor
of John as head of nutrition at the
London School (second from left);
Philip James, now president of
the International Association for
the Study of Obesity (third from
left). The people present, including
some not shown here, included a
number of the leading scientists who
study energy and protein metabolism
and requirements, the field in which
John was the pre-eminent scientist
and global policy advisor for four
decades.
The photograph speaks to a great
life and heritage. Of John, George
Alleyne has said (1): ‘I and many
others can attest to the truth of
the legend of the master’; and spoke
of his ‘love for scientific enquiry,
to follow what we took to be the
truth’. Nevin Scrimshaw, who based
in the Americas is of equal stature
with John, has said: ‘He is a giant
among international nutritionists of
our generation. His contributions to
the understanding of protein-energy
malnutrition in children, and many
other significant issues affecting
the children of developing
countries, are of seminal
importance’. And they will remain so
(2).
Barrie Margetts, founder and for
nine years editor-in-chief of the
international journal Public
Health Nutrition, says: ‘John, a
former president of the UK Nutrition
Society, the owner of PHN, and of
the International Union of
Nutritional Sciences, will always
have a unique influence on my
thinking and my work. A couple of
years ago he gently and firmly
chided us for paying too much
attention to chronic diseases which,
as he saw it, privileged people tend
to bring upon themselves in later
life, and not enough attention to
undernutrition especially of African
and Asian children, basically caused
by poverty and injustice. He was and
is right. This was also a challenge
to us to think again about the
meaning and purpose of public health
nutrition’.
In recent years Association website
and World Nutrition editor
Geoffrey Cannon regularly
visited Joan Stephen and John at
their house in Notting Hill Gate,
London. Supper, always festive, was
usually at Costa’s Grill, the Greek
restaurant opposite in Hillgate
Street. ‘With John’ he said ‘every
word was weighed. At the end of one
of my visits, which always for me
had a sense of pilgrimage, he
“thought you might like to have
these”, and gave me two of his books
(2,3). I refer to both of them
within every month. For me what is
John’s great quality – for this will
live for ever – has been the ethical
standards that he has considered in
all his work. At the end of the UN
report on Energy and Protein
Requirements (4), which he
masterminded, John wrote, of
protein: “No longer can we bypass
the question, requirements for
what?”. In this report, these were
his last words. He wrote of protein
and, I have come to feel, of all
such questions, that require not
just information, but above all
judgement and wisdom’.
References
- Shetty P (ed).
Nutritional Metabolism and
Malnutrition. Festschrift for
John Conrad Waterlow.
London: Smith-Gordon, 2000.
- Waterlow J. Protein-Energy
Metabolism. Revised edition.
London: Smith-Gordon, 2006.
- Waterlow J. Needs for food.
Are we asking too much? [Chapter
1]. In: Waterlow J, Armstrong D,
Fowden L, Riley R (eds).
Feeding a World Population of
More Than Eight Billion People.
A Challenge to Science. New
York: Oxford University Press,
1998.
- World Health Organization.
Energy and Protein Requirements.
Report of a Joint FAO/WHO/UNU
expert consultation. Technical
report series 724. Geneva: WHO,
1985.
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